Page 83 of One Last Gift

Hazel looked at Josh a little musingly. “Maybe seventy-thirty?”

“Yes,” Josh agreed, then looked at Cassie. “Go.”

Cassie laughed. “It’s…” She lifted both hands in the air, let them fall back to her lap. “I don’t know. It’s hard work, but it is brilliant. I think it’ll be ready to open in March—and you both have to come. I’m going to try and do a kind of launch party, invite the press, that sort of thing.”

“We will one thousand percent be there,” Josh said firmly, and Hazel nodded.

Tom would still be an investor, Cassie thought, even though he wouldn’t be around to see her try to make a go of it. She planned to do one retreat a year—a wellness retreat, with an emphasis on living harmoniously with nature, something he would have been proud of—in his name.

“Well, I guess this means you’re not coming back to the flat then,” Hazel said with a sigh. “Does this mean you’re officially giving your room up?”

Cassie bit her lip. “I think it does.” They’d agreed not to make it official until Cassie had spent a couple of months in Wales, in case she hated the whole thing—a kind of security blanket. She looked at Hazel, felt her eyes well. The thought of not living with her best friend gave her a pang. She’d just done it for three months, yes, but this would be more permanent. She’d lived with Hazel since leaving university; they’d grown up together.

Hazel was looking like she might cry too, but she straightened her spine, gave Cassie a mock-warning finger waggle. “Don’t back out now. Do you really want to move back in, go back to working for Robert?”

Cassie grimaced. “No.”

“Well then,” Hazel said, with a firm nod. She’d cut her black hair recently, into a chic bob, and it swished with the movement. “We’ll still see each other. All the time.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Cassie said with a smile.

“Does this mean you have a spare room?” Josh piped up. “Because the guys I’m living with are all parting ways and, well…”

Hazel looked at him, and her eyes widened. “Really?” He nodded, and she flashed a grin. “Oh God, you’re so in. That’s way better than having to find someone random.”

Hazel’s phone beeped and she picked it up. Smiled a little before she wrote back. “Who is it?” Cassie asked.

Hazel hesitated. “Chris.”

“Chris?” Cassie’s eyebrows shot up. “As in, the Chris you’ve already been on two dates with?”

“Yes, Cassie,” Hazel said in an overly placatory way. “That Chris. And you can stop smiling like that now.”

Two waiters came out with the food and the bottle of prosecco at the same time. Cassie looked from her newly poured glass of fizz to the vegetable Thai green curry in front of her. “Not quite the right vibe, is it?”

Josh waved that away. “We’ll make it the right vibe.” He held up his glass. “To Cassie and her new adventure.” The three of them clinked glasses.

“And Happy Christmas,” Hazel added.

Cassie clinked again with the other too, but she felt a twinge in her gut. She hadn’t figured out yet what she was doing for Christmas. Christmas without Tom. She’d been trying to ignore it, her new project a welcome distraction. Claire had invited her to France, and she was thinking she might do that—see if she could get a last-minute flight tomorrow. It would be a good combination of being with someone who knew Tom, but also not being where they’d grown up together. Hazel had also offered to spend Christmas with her somewhere completely different, just the two of them, if that was what she wanted, but Cassie knew that Hazel would go out of her way to make it lovely and fun, and then she’d feel the pressure to live up to that. With Claire, she was only just beginning to learn, she could just be. Either way, though, she was going to have to figure out a way through it.

She still had the prosecco in her hand, suspended in midair. Hazel met her gaze, gave her a small smile of understanding. “To Tom,” she murmured, and held her glass up a third time.

Cassie pressed her lips together when they wanted to tremble. “To Tom,” she whispered. She took a sip, put the glass down, and felt Josh take her hand on one side, Hazel the other, so that they were all linked. She took a breath, breathing in the chili and coconut, then let it out slowly.

One of the waiters came over, black hair slicked back, looking far too young to be working in a restaurant. “Umm…Miss?” He looked from Cassie to Hazel, eyebrows pulled together, clearly not sure who to address.

Hazel immediately sat up very straight, and gestured confidently to Cassie, who frowned. But her attention was diverted by the waiter when he spoke again.

“Something has been delivered here, for you. It came on a bike,” he added, in a voice that suggested that was most perplexing. “For your table number.”

He handed over an envelope. An envelope, exactly like the ones Tom used to put his clues in. Her heart jumped. One more clue? But that didn’t make sense; she’d gotten to the end. And Tom couldn’t possibly have known they’d be here now. “Umm…Thank you,” she said to the waiter, who nodded and, after hovering for a moment, perhaps hoping she’d open it in front of him, slunk off.

Cassie turned the envelope over in her hands, looked at Hazel. “How do you know it’s for me?”

“I just do. Open it.” Her voice held that demanding tone that Cassie knew all too well, so she gently tore the white seal, and took out a sheet of paper from within. Her fingertips tingling, she read the short note.

Cassie,